Far from my first iPhone...the decision to upgrade principally driven by the onboard camera quality. However, I find SIRI to be a curious "attribute".

It's something between toy and vanity, I think. It's still a distraction and safety hazard when driving, unable to deal with low s/nR situations in the vehicle, and prompting the occasional expletive.

Perhaps Siri's best attribute is her ability to deal with human frustration...

"****-You" results in Siri admonishing "no need for profanity". My expectations for voice recognition are fairly low, so I wasn't frustrated with the program, just playing with it, at the time. In general, however, I find it to be more a distraction than a tool.

If, however, Siri comes back and says, "I'm sorry, I can't do that, Dave...." I may have to revise my thinking. (with acknowledgement to Stanley Kubrick.)

As all you blogers below know it is true Jobs drove the Apple Super Ship of American Enterprise to heights unimagined in the past but, as the worlds engineers know this wasn't by accident. Just examin the contributors list to his companies success!

My point: GREAT COMPANIES CAN DO GREAT THINGS! This concept has been proven time and again in times of war or peace. The difference now is the Globalized Support Expeteese necessary to make this happen. The bold listed companies above are the REAL Sytems Integration Designers and creative reason the prpduct works. But, the genious of conceptlies within the dream of it's creator. This should be remempered by ALL HR types evaluating applicants for the "undefinable jobs" that require special talents. Talents gained by experience rather than formal education .

I agree with the comments and was a skeptic, too, until a friend of mine gave me a demo of Siri on his new iPhone 4S. Sure, there's a lot of funkiness with Siri and there's almost a game people play asking it hard to answer questions or cursing at it to see how it responds. At the same time, it's clearly the most user friendly speech recognition and response system ever fielded in a consumer device. And it's too darn bad Steve Jobs isn't here to get it to generation 2 and beyond. It's got huge potential, and I'm sure we'll see the Android phones mimic it very soon.

Good point - but the iP4S does have other improvements/enhancements besides Siri (which, BTW, can be frustrating at times!) - an 8 MP Camera as well as a base of 16 GB memory, faster speed and an improved operating system. Believe it or not, this is the first Apple Product I've ever purchased - and so far, it is making me a believer - I might just purchase an Apple as my next Computer!

Beyond the addition of the Siri voice recognition system, I'm not sure what the big advances are with this new iPhone in terms of actual new functionality for the user. I also find it curious that a lot of the media and Apple watchers expressed disappointed with the new model upon its initial introduction (maybe expecting a more radical iPhone 5 model) and have subsequently been singing its praises. Nostalgia, perhaps, in the post-Jobs Apple era?

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

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